Research Activities

Research Projects

FY 2007/2008 Research Topic: 4-14
Integration System of the Stock-Raising Business in Latin America

Outline

The integration system in the stock-raising businesses is a large-scale vertical and horizontal network consisting of various sectors of the economy related to the production and distribution of livestock meat such as chicken, pork and beef.

The system was originally developed in the United States and was introduced to Latin American countries with packages of advanced technologies. It has gradually supplanted the indigenous system of stock-raising which is characterized as small in scale, rudimentary in technology and intuitional in management.

We postulate that the introduction of the integration system of stock-raising and its expansion into Latin America has been one of the major driving forces of the large scale restructuring of the industry, characterized by a concentration of production, increase of professionally managed firms, advance of multinational corporations and expansion of exports, which have been observed in the past two decades under the economic globalization.

With this working hypothesis in mind we will analyze the industrial organization of the integration system of stock-raising business of four Latin American countries, namely, Mexico, Brazil, Peru and Chile, and determine the causal relationship with industrial restructuring and the prospect of future development of the industry in these four Latin American countries.